The Doctor Falls

"We've been debating the best way to kill you."

Writer: Steven Moffat
Format: TV
Broadcast: 1st July 2017
Series: 10.12

Featuring: Twelfth Doctor, Bill, Nardole

Synopsis

How many times have you died? How many different ways? Have you burned? I know you've fallen. Have you ever drowned? Have you ever felt the blade? Death is always more frightening when it strikes invisibly.

Verdict

The Doctor Falls was a very good conclusion to the story already started in World Enough and Time and as a pairing they formed a terrific finale of the tenth series of Doctor Who. Now, this is probably going to be a little bit of a weird blog entry given my rating but I think I'm going to be quite critical of an episode that I actually thoroughly enjoyed. Right off the bat, I wasn't the biggest fan of how much story advancement there was and I was actually really looking forward to seeing the immediate aftermath of the cliffhanger with the Doctor's stunned reaction to seeing two incarnations of the Master as well as his companion now a Mondasian Cyberman. Instead we barely returned to that through flashbacks and instead we had the Master and Missy almost victorious over the Doctor already. The Doctor though had managed to attract the Cybermen to the Time Lords rather than humanity in a scuffle and I loved his boastfulness in assuredly stating that the only thing to stop that many Cybermen was himself. Nardole was terrific in this episode and I loved how he just popped up with a spacecraft but even after that, when leading the defence against the impending arrival of the Cybermen, he was magnificent and I think I really am going to miss him as a companion. Bill provided an immense amount of emotion to the story but I must say that I'm not overly thrilled that she got a happy ending with Heather. It was nice to come full circle from The Pilot but I do wish she just stayed dead as a Cyberman. I think her departure would have been more heartfelt had it been that way. I'm still not sure how she wasn't a Cyberman any longer either. The Doctor being attacked by a Mondasian Cyberman and then shot by one later in the episode prompted the Time Lord's regeneration but he was very eager to put it off. That didn't surprise me and I loved how the Twelfth Doctor didn't want to change again. That was very much in line with Capaldi's incarnation. He even said no more and let himself be blown up with the Cybermen on Floor 507. That whole setting was intriguing and I thought Alit was a wonderful little character. It was good to see that she was not scared of Bill, even though she was a Cyberman. The moments that the Master and Missy shared with each other were wonderful but I was hoping to see them in a bit more action. The explanation of John Simm's incarnation survival and return from The End of Time was a neat inclusion and I liked the ambiguity surrounding whether Missy was indeed the next regeneration along. I certainly hope it's not the case otherwise the fate of the Master could be very sketchy indeed. The idea of two versions of the Master meeting themselves and killing each other was quite a shock but the fact that Missy had changed and was standing with the Doctor seems to be the perfect catalyst for that. The numerous references to Cybermen stories such as The Moonbase, The Tomb of the Cybermen and Revenge of the Cybermen were wonderful and I also loved the mentions of Planet 14 and Marinus. This essentially serves as the Twelfth Doctor's regeneration story and I liked how we heard echoes of phrases from other incarnations from the mouth of the Doctor himself. Where there's tears, there's hope. And that brought the Doctor back. He'd lost Bill. He'd lost Nardole. He was dying and his body demanded change but he just didn't want to go on anymore. Not as anybody else. But then the TARDIS brought him somewhere he never thought he could go. To himself. His first self. That cliffhanger with the emergence of David Bradley playing the First Doctor put an incredible smile on my face and I really cannot wait for Christmas now! Overall, a decent episode and a great finale as a whole!

Rating: 9/10